NATURAL CYCLE IVF | MINIMAL STIMULATION IVF | CONVENTIONAL IVF | IVF TREATMENT COMPARISON CHART
WHICH IVF TREATMENT IS BEST FOR YOU?
When it comes to making decisions about your body and family, knowledge truly is power. While we are dedicated to the more natural, gentler IVF approaches, Mini-IVFTM and Natural Cycle IVF treatments, you should feel confident in your decision before committing to it. So, we have provided educational information about all IVF treatments; not all clinics offer all treatment types, so be sure to ask. We hope this helps you to better understand your choices.
There are essentially three categories of IVF treatment plans; they are the Natural Cycle IVF treatment, the Mini-IVFTM treatment (called Minimal Stimulation IVF elsewhere), and the Conventional IVF treatment.
Each varies slightly from clinic to clinic, but the process is generally universal. All IVF treatments involve ensuring one or more eggs mature during a woman's menstrual cycle, extracting the eggs near the time of ovulation, fertilizing them with sperm to create embryos, and implanting the embryos back into the woman's uterus for hopeful pregnancy.
The overriding differences are the doses & type of IVF hormonal drug therapy prescribed (to aid the body to develop multiple eggs), whether or not those drugs are daily injections or consumed orally, the number of eggs targeted in each IVF attempt, & the total cost to achieve a live birth.
The Natrual Cycle IVF Treatment
You may not have heard much about the Natural Cycle IVF Treatment, but it was actually the world's first IVF treatment & resulted in a child in 1978, Louise Brown, who herself just gave birth -naturally. Because of new advanced technologies, Natural Cycle IVF has been renewed along with its popularity and demand, and pregnancy rates as high as 32% are now being reported.
The Natural Cycle IVF treatment is the safest, most pure, holistic treatment a woman can choose. It uses no IVF hormone drugs to stimulate the ovaries for multiple egg recruitment. Instead, it embraces the one ‘quality' egg a woman produces naturally each month.
The draw back with Natural Cycle IVF is also its benefit; since it relies on the one egg nature provides with no IVF drugs, there is a 30% chance the follicle will contain no egg and this cannot be discovered until during egg retrieval. Also, since no drugs are used to control the timing of ovulation, the timing of egg retrieval is delicate - if the egg retrieval timeframe is miscalculated the eggs could be either immature or could prematurely ovulate before the egg retrieval can be done. However, cycles can be repeated consecutively over a 3 to 6 month period which will give you a similar chance to have a baby as if you had gone through 2-3 cycles of Conventional IVF during the same 3 to 6 month timeframe.
The Natural Cycle IVF treatment is ideal for women who wish to avoid altogether the pain of 20-60 IVF drug injections per month & the 13-33% (depending on her age) chance for twins expected with Conventional IVF. Another factor is cost; Natural Cycle IVF averages $2,800 for the treatment and $0 for drugs per attempt, compared with $7,500 - $12,000 for the treatment plus $2,500-$5,000 for IVF drugs per attempt using the Conventional IVF method. Last, women who produce less than 3-5 eggs during Conventional IVF (and who are likely cancelled for treatment), & women over 40 who are less likely to produce multiple eggs are both ideal candidates for the Natural Cycle IVF treatment. Click here for an IVF Treatment Comparison Chart.
New Hope Fertility Center was one of the first fertility centers in the US to provide Natural Cycle IVF and consequently we are considered experts in the treatment. Because our center is dedicated only to gentle IVF approaches, Natural Cycle IVF remains one of our primary fertility treatments.
Minimal Stimulation IVF Treatment - Mini-IVFTM
You also may not have heard of the Mini-IVFTM treatment (also called Minimal Stimulation IVF) even though it has been time honored since 1967 when it was first approved in the US. Advanced technologies have also thwarted minimal stimulation IVF, our Mini-IVFTM treatment, back into the spotlight and it's making a comeback with unprecedented steadfast growth.
It too embraces a more natural, holistic approach to IVF, whereby excessive drugs & daily injections are avoided. The Mini-IVFTM treatment, seeks to mature roughly 3-5 ‘quality' eggs with the help of 1 Clomid pill daily & no more than 1-3 injections of Menopure per cycle prior to egg retrieval. Clomid stimulates your ovaries to mature the maximum number of ‘quality' eggs (the ones needed to create quality embryos and live births) your body can typically produce in one cycle.
As you read on, you'll see the Conventional IVF method aims to maximize the number of eggs retrieved, regardless of egg quality. With Conventional IVF it is possible to retrieve 8-15 eggs, but we know only 3-5 of those will produce embryos capable of sustaining a healthy pregnancy, and the Mini-IVFTM treatment deliberately focuses only on those 3-5 quality eggs. See an IVF Treatment Comparison Chart.
For this reason, we recommend the Mini-IVFTM treatment for most women. We believe high-dose expensive daily injections are painful, wasteful, and risky especially when you will likely have a similar outcome to Conventional IVF. The Mini-IVFTM treatment implantation pregnancy rate is 7.41 - 24.5% depending on the age of the woman -comparable to Conventional IVF which is 7.6% - 28.9%, less expensive ($4,800-$5,100 versus $10,000-$17,000), requires no daily injections which makes it very easy and stress-free, and has fewer long term health risks. Also, there is no wait time. If pregnancy doesn't result in one cycle, you can immediately begin again next month. Conventional IVF commonly requires a wait of 1-2 months before you can start a new treatment cycle. And, in particular women with high FSH levels or an inability to produce multiple eggs due to age or poor fertility health should absolutely always use the Mini-IVFTM treatment (or Natural Cycle IVF if she can only produce one egg). The Mini-IVFTM treatment is simply an easier experience.
New Hope Fertility Center is a globally recognized expert in both Natural Cycle IVF and Mini-IVFTM treatments, and 95% of our cycles are done using the Mini-IVFTM treatment.
HyperStimulation IVF Treatment
Conventional IVF is the most aggressive of all IVF treatment options, and is more commonly known and widely used. It aims to disassociate a woman's ovaries from her own hormonal control and rely solely on injection hormones to recruit the maximum amount of eggs possible (usually 8-15 in women under 35). It is possible more than 3-5 of those eggs (possibly 4-10) will fertilize into embryos, but typically only 3-5 embryos will survive implantation, full term pregnancy, and healthy live births. Your ovaries need high dosages of IVF drugs in order to mature 8-15 eggs, so Conventional IVF requires 1-2 daily injections (20-60 in one month) for this to occur. It has an implantation pregnancy rate of 7.6% – 28.9% (age dependent) and costs $10,000-$17,000 per cycle including drugs. Also, you should be aware that the chance of having twins with Conventional IVF is up to 33% depending on your age, and there is up to 5% chance for multiples.
Because the daily injections have high dosages of hormone medication, your ovaries cannot recover fast enough to start another cycle the next month. If you do not become pregnant in your first attempt, you will typically have to wait 1-2 months to start again. Click here for an IVF Treatment Comparison Chart.
Many women are told more eggs will increase their chances of having a baby. They may be uninformed that quality is more important than quantity of eggs, and that the live birth rates of Minimal Stimulation IVF and Conventional IVF are comparable. It's a desperate time so many women get attached to having 8-15 eggs (regardless of quality), and may be disappointed if they only retrieve 3-5 eggs with the Mini-IVFTM treatment. In this case, Conventional IVF is the best treatment for them, particularly in patients less than 37 years old with potential to make 3-5 good quality eggs even though the majority of eggs retrieved still will not produce live births. Conventional IVF may also be valuable in patients undergoing IVF for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for known genetic disorders, cancer patients who only have 1 month before starting radiation and chemotherapy, and it is best for donor egg IVF cases.